1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the field of providing a synthesis technique to produce bulk amounts of gallium oxide nanowires, micron scale tubes, and paintbrush-like structures synthesized by direct reaction of atomic oxygen and hydrogen radicals with molten gallium.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Nanostructures find unique applications in electronics, optoelectronics, and catalysis due to their high surface to volume ratio, enhanced material characteristics due to quantum confinement effects and the high fraction of chemically similar surface sites. Functionalization of these nanostructures can only be achieved and become useful through the synthesis of bulk quantities of defined structures with controlled composition, crystallinity and morphology. Gallium oxide is a wide-bandgap material and is of interest due to its interesting bulk properties such as conduction and luminescence. These properties make it a candidate for gas sensing, catalytic, and optoelectronic device applications. Nanostructures of gallium oxide will be of particular interest for these applications.
Gallium oxide nanowires have been synthesized using several techniques such as physical evaporation, arc discharge, and catalyst assisted methods. All of these techniques have been thought to proceed according to two primary mechanisms. The first mechanism involves carbothermal reduction of gallium oxide to produce gas phase gallium suboxide growth species. The second mechanism relies on transition metal catalyst or evaporated gallium clusters to provide the necessary template for size control of the resulting nanowires.